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Thread: Optimal WinXP pagefile location

  1. #1
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    Optimal WinXP pagefile location

    Would I be better off putting the pagefile on my primary (windows) C:\ SATA drive or my secondary D:\ IDE drive?

  2. #2
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    In theory, the SATA drive is faster, but unless you are doing something pretty specialist I don't think you will notice much difference with a modern PC, with a Gig of RAM.

    The theory of tuning swapfiles/pagefiles is really back from the days of feeble machines, slow HDDs and small amounts of slow RAM.

    Cheers

  3. #3
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    Originally posted here by nihil
    In theory, the SATA drive is faster, but unless you are doing something pretty specialist I don't think you will notice much difference with a modern PC, with a Gig of RAM.

    The theory of tuning swapfiles/pagefiles is really back from the days of feeble machines, slow HDDs and small amounts of slow RAM.

    Cheers
    Yes I agree with him, SATA drive is faster but if your system is good enough or should I say fast enough to process your programs or data, you should stay with IDE ( if you are satisfied your system speed), However if you really want to use SATA its still a liitle bit faster.

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    if IDE HD is the only device on ide channel, put pagefile on IDE and stay with the system at sata disk. If u have a heavy load, it will notice the diference.
    Meu sítio

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  5. #5
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    Just to add what has already been said

    Dont run any other apps or processes off the IDE....just keep it for the page file...

    It used to improve performance on NT 4 machines...

    Not sure on XP...as most of it runs in RAM....
    With XP...the more RAM the better...not too sure if you will notice a huge improvement unless you are running an app that swaps to the page file alot....maybe an intense graphic program???

    Just my .02 CDN

    MLF
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  6. #6
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Viper~

    You now have a variety of opinions which are all true but say different things

    You have not told us your hardware specifications, but the fact that you have a SATA drive suggests that you have very modern equipment. I suspect that your IDE drive is 7200Rpm and your SATA drive 10,000 Rpm?

    Cacosapo has a good point in that if your IDE channel is shared with other devices then this could slow it down. Also, your operating system/applications drive is already getting a lot of I/O requests, so will not perform as well, even though it spins 2,800 Rpm faster.

    Against this, there is the theory that it is quicker to find two files on the same drive, than have to swap channels/drives.................I guess that starts to bring BUS speeds into the equation?

    morganlefay takes this further by suggesting that you might even consider a dedicated swapfile drive. He rightly points out that this depends very much on what you are running. It is the kind of setup I have seen on dedicated CAD and graphics manipulation/DTP machines (maybe "Photoshop" and "Quark").

    I have an XP box with 1024Mb of RAM, and it really does not seem to use the pagefile very much. So my personal observations back up MLF's suspicions............XP seems to handle large quantities of RAM more efficently.

    I agree entirely with MLF on the Win NT4 front.............I go back to Win 3.1x and 9x as well, so his comment made me nostalgic I can well remember creating dedicated swap/page file partitions on the second HDD.

    There were two basic reasons for this:

    1. The Windows default did not manage the page/swap file very well in a high usage environment.

    2. If you boot into "safe mode" you can defragment the page/swap file you have created, because Windows will create one on your primary drive (usually c:\)............we used "Diskeeper" or 00-Defrag, as NT did not ship with a defragmentor until NT5 (Windows 2000)

    Sorry, I am rambling.................I guess it goes back to the point that you will only see a difference if what you are doing is pagefile intensive.

    Cheers

  7. #7
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    nihil

    Thanks.....just thought I would point out...not that it really matters though

    I agree entirely with MLF on the Win NT4 front.............I go back to Win 3.1x and 9x as well, so his comment made me nostalgic
    ...her

    He rightly points out

    ...she

    MLF
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  8. #8
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    Well as you know I'm running XP, with 1024mb ddr400 dual channel ram with an athlon64fx53 (s939), the IDE is a 180gb western digital @ 7200rpm, and the sata is a 160gb samsung, i assume its running at 10000rpm if thats the default sata speed. I'm not doing anything too heavy like cad, but I would consider myself a power user.

    I've done some basic testing and my computer does seem faster if I keep the pagefile on the c:\ sata drive.

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